The Pac-12 Conference is going to look completely different in two years and UC Davis might be part of those future plans. Athletic director Rocko DeLuca made a cryptic post on social media that set the college football world on fire.
Do the Aggies want to make the jump from FCS to FBS?
It was announced on Wednesday night that the Pac-12 will add Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State prior to the 2026-27 academic year. A two-team conference of just Oregon State and Washington State is up to six. The expansion is not done yet!
Although the Pac-12 would love to re-add Cal and Stanford, it is unlikely that the Golden Bears and Cardinal will bolt from the ACC after such a short amount of time. There would be a lot of legal hurdles. Things would get messy.
Assuming that neither of those two schools are going to make the move back, focus will presumably shift to schools like Tulane, Memphis, Wyoming, UTSA or UNLV. Air Force is also in the conversation.
From there, FCS schools are an option. North Dakota State and South Dakota State are perennial powerhouses that consistently prove they can compete with bigger FBS programs. Sacramento State would also make sense, and local government officials are making the push, but it sounds like the Hornets don’t want to leave the Big Sky.
And then there’s UC Davis…
It might seem strange for a conference as prominent as the Pac-12 to even consider adding a school with a brand as small as the University of California, Davis— because it is. However, there is more logic to the move than you might think.
First and foremost, the Aggies’ women’s lacrosse team joined the Pac-12 as an affiliate member for one season prior to the mass exodus of USC, UCLA, Oregon, Arizona, etc. The school and the conference have a brief history that could be rekindled.
College football is the biggest piece of this equation in terms of athletics.
UC Davis, Cal-Berkeley and UCLA are the only three of 10 schools in the University of California system to field a football team. If the Pac-12 wanted to get back into the UC system, the Aggies are the only answer.
In terms of on-field play, UC Davis is actually pretty good for a newer program. It only made the jump from Division II to Division I FCS in 2002. The Aggies have since rattled off upset wins over Stanford, San Jose State and Tulsa. They reached the FCS quarterfinals after winning the Big Sky Conference in 2018.
Finances will also help UC Davis’ case.
The university enrolls more than 40,000 students. Its endowment of $2.25 billion is larger than schools like Alabama, Colorado and Missouri. There is significant wealth in Davis, which could help its case.
Along those lines, athletic director Rocko DeLuca teased expansion plans for UC Davis Health Stadium shortly after the soon-to-be new Pac-12 was announced. The 17-year-old field underwent significant renovations in 2023 and was built with the hope of going even bigger in the future.
Perhaps DeLuca was hinting at the idea that the Aggies could expand its stadium for a new conference…
The Pac-12 could go in a lot of different directions. It will look to add no less than two more teams to reach the NCAA requirement of eight.
All things considered, UC Davis could make more sense than you might think!